One Thing I Truly Love About The Raven Cycle Is That Ronan Begins As This Cool, Mysterious Alt Guy And

"the board is going to give him what he wants, including helly r" OUGHHHHHHH i am rooting for mark/helly but DAMN it is bone chilling to be confronted with helena realizing that when the elevator door opens she will be probably touched intimately by a man who is a total stranger. her body is a thing lumon is willing to give him and she has to sign over all her agency and ability to consent to helly r.

truly terrifying

just finished the raven cycle. Oh my God.

that one scene in the raven king where henry wants blue to go with him somewhere in a car but she's like "no i have a strong hating-rich-boys-especially-raven-ones reputation here and people are looking at me", so he's like "fair enough" and pretends to dramatically have a fight with her so her reputation upholds, and drives away. and then equally rich and equally raven boy gansey arrives and stops right next to her. easily top 10 funniest scenes in the entire series

I have seen a lot of fics about the Justice League finding out Bruce has kids and being shocked about it, but what about the other way around? Like imagine Dick ghosting Bruce and ignoring everything related to Batman for six months after an argument and the day he finally decides to visit to make amends he finds fuckin Superman chilling on his kitchen, or like Jason coming back from the dead, ready to fuck shit up, just to get whiplash after finding out that his loser dad has friends and one of them is Wonder Woman

one thing about me is that I do not play about catcher in the rye! like I'm sorry the traumatized mentally ill 16 year old is not acting in a mature enough manner for you! Surely the purpose of his thoughts and behavior is not meant to be a commentary on teenage mental illness and the way adults fail children and is instead bad writing that only manipulative and bad people enjoy and relate to.

I've been pondering the split fandom reaction to Helena Eagan trying to make sense of it all. On one side there is an understanding that all of the harm she has done is unacceptable and irreconcilable. On the other hand some people are intrigued and empathize with the misogyny and pressure she may face and how love and acceptance may be a salve to those issues.

A little bit of it is girlbossification and fandoms yearning and enjoyment of redemptive narratives but I also think the privilege of whiteness is also at play.

Helena Eagan is a rich white woman who benefits and aids in the oppression of the average laborer. And though she is a victim of misogyny and daddy issues she is still the heir to a major corporation. Parts of this fandom have twisted themselves into pretzels trying to justify why she is actually the victim and heroine of this story. And maybe they're right I have no idea what Dan Erickson has planned but the need to make her the central victim when she is facing the same facets and tools of oppressiveness that Devon and Natalie are doesn't make her particularly special.

It just means that she is in a world in which these systems and attitudes exist. It doesn't make her any more oppressed than any other woman who lives in this society. The thing that actually sets Helena Eagan apart is the power she holds as an Eagan and the harm she perpetuates and creates. Helena Eagan RAPED Mark S./Mark Scout. She took away Helly R's autonomy.

Why hasn't the same empathy been given to characters like Seth Milchick and Natalie Kalen. It's because they are not white. As the racial contours of this story continue to take shape I urge you to deconstruct where your biases lie and how they impact how you interact with the characters.

Hi Maggie, I'd really like to hear you say a bit more about why you wrote Adam trying to repair the relationship with his abusive parents in the Raven King. What is the merit in salvaging a relationship such as that, and do you think it is possible for Adam's parents to truly redeem themselves? P.S. Can't wait for Call Down The Hawk, hopefully by the time it comes out I'll quit accidentally calling it Call The Hawk Down (every time I do that I'm like SHIT...was that it? That wasn't it...)

Dear courageofhorses,

I have also seen CALM DOWN THE HAWK which is a perfectly appropriate title.

Following is spoilers for TRK

spoilers

spoilers

no seriously

spoilers

CAVEAT: I’m going to answer this with how I interpret Adam’s character, but in the end, the books live without me, so it’s what makes it on the page and into your interpretation that counts.

THAT SAID. I’m not sure I would call Adam’s final move in The Raven King an attempt to repair the relationship, because it’s not about his parents, it’s about him. It’s about what he needs to say and do in order to feel he has the moral high ground; it’s what he personally requires to allow himself freedom.

By the time we get to that final scene of his in TRK, he’s been living on his own for quite awhile, a high school senior who fled his childhood home under duress. In that time, he’s lived through a helluva lot of traumatic and brilliant events. He’s seen his mentor die, he’s fallen in love, he’s dreaded his best friend’s death, he’s learned that he can be a good friend. 

The only time he’s seen his father in that time is when he comes busting through the door of his apartment with violence and Cabeswater intervenes. 

Otherwise, it has been only Adam and his memories of his parents, and if there is anything Adam doesn’t trust throughout the series, it’s his own interpretation of events. He’s been trained his entire childhood to doubt himself. 

So him returning to TRK isn’t about him genuinely trying to repair a relationship, to accept his parents back into his life despite all the’ve done to him. Instead, it’s about him — for the first time, ever — walking back to the trailer he grew up in without fear. He’s just come from graduation, and he’s closing the books behind him. He’s choosing to be blunt with his parents, without fear, older, wiser, more powerful. He knows he can trust whatever he sees as he walks back through that door under his own steam. It will be the truth, not what his battered emotional thoughts whispered to him for 800 pages.

Adam returns to see if, now that he knows himself, these people he saw as monsters still look like monsters. He wants to see if he becomes monstrous in their presence. He wants to feel for the first time in his life the glorious glow of the absolutely certain high ground while looking at his father. 

He wants to exorcise the memory of a fearful man who controlled his life for 17 years by instead facing him with the full knowledge that he has no control over Adam whatsoever. 

And as to the rest: shit, man. Even if your parents beat the crap out of you, it can be hard to make the decision to walk away completely. The voices whisper that maybe it wasn’t that bad –

But Adam says what he came to say.

He came to see if he ever had parents. If, once he didn’t hate himself, they might be different. And guess what: he’s the only thing that changed. They didn’t. 

He fled that trailer last time he left. Like the scared kid he was. But now he just walks out, like the man he became.

So to me, that scene is about Adam coming back to the trailer to realize this about his past:

And this about his future:

And walking out as Adam Parrish, son of no one, only himself.

tl;dr: abuse is a complicated creature with many different roads to closure. Is what Adam does right? I can’t say that. Is what I think Adam did in that scene what you think he did in that scene? I can’t say that either.

But I reckon that’s what I was thinking when I walked him out that door for the last time.

urs,

Stiefvater

i dont care if mondays rife,tuesday qednesday full of strife, thursday fuck my baka life, its friday im in sucks

sometimes i randomly remember how insane maggie stiefvater was for making ronan lynch—a man that can create reality—a man of god, when he himself is a god of a man. then to take this man and have him be not only in love with, but a literal soulmate of a man named adam. parrish. adam parrish. who, mind you, lives above ronan's very own place of worship. and is the namesake of the first of mankind that the bible says god made from the literal dust of the ground (adam parrish: comes from nothing, hair "dusty" in color) and appoints him to care for the garden of eden (adam parrish: sacrifices himself to ronan's sentient forest). then has adam viewing ronan as a god and ronan saying "maybe he dreamt (created)" adam???? like who just fucking writes that and goes about their life?

would you?